


The Road to Esterbrook

by thedevilchicken



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Barebacking, Consensual Underage Sex, Developing Relationship, Georgian Period, Getting Together, M/M, Older Man/Younger Man, Past Relationship(s), Rimming, Uncle/Nephew Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:28:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24080593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Alexander Estermont has barely seen his parents since he was eight years old. Now, at seventeen, he has a great deal more affection for his father's twin brother Thomas than he ought to.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character, Teen/His Father's Twin Brother
Comments: 7
Kudos: 173
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	The Road to Esterbrook

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Origen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origen/gifts).



This is not the first time Alex has travelled alone. It is, however, the first time he's travelled with such purpose. 

The journey from his boarding school near Plymouth to his uncle's home takes three days and requires two changes of coach. Alex doesn't usually mind the time; he'll read all the way there, leaning into a corner of the seat so he can rest his head back and feel it knock lightly against the panelling beside the door with every rut and pothole that they find in the road. He usually finds rooms in country inns along the way a diverting adventure rather than a necessary and grating evil. This time, however, he's been too anxious to read. He hasn't found it an adventure. He hopes the adventure is yet to come.

The Estermont family estate is located amongst the Peaks in Derbyshire, a mile's easy walk outside the small market town of Brookton. They call the house Esterbrook, at least partially because it lies to the east of the fast-flowing river that runs through the town and on through the valleys beyond to join the Derwent. The river Ester has long since widened and deepened from the original babbling brook the town and house were named for; people fish in it, in its slower bends, and sometimes row their boats in it, but no one swims in it. The first year that he stayed the summer there, Alex heard one of the servants joking that the Ester had killed more men than Napoleon, and he remembers the look on his uncle's face. It's been seventeen years since Waterloo and the Treaty of Paris. It's been thirty-seven years since the eldest of the Estermont boys drowned in the Ester. Alex's uncle Tom is unlikely to forget either thing. 

It's been seventeen years since Thomas Endicott Estermont returned from the war. It's been seventeen years since Alexander Ellingham Estermont was born, the only child of Thomas' twin brother, Charles, and his wife Jane Ellingham. Now Alex sees more of his uncle Tom, Lord Estermont, than he ever sees of his parents. If he's honest, he doesn't feel particularly sad about that fact. He doesn't know them, after all, except from their letters, which arrive regularly but sparse in content. He can count the times he's seen them since he left for Deepgate School ten years ago on the fingers of one hand. The last time, they barely recognised him, and the only reason that he knew his own father was the resemblance he bore to his twin.

His uncle's carriage is there to meet him in the square where the coach makes its stop, but he doesn't climb in when the footman steps down to open the door. He greets both him and the driver by name - he has a good head for names, made simpler in this case by the fact that he's spoken to both men on his previous visits and finds them both perfectly amiable - and he asks them to please take his trunk up to the house, but he'll walk. 

"It's not far," he says, and he gestures up into the clear, sunny sky. "And it's such a beautiful day. If my uncle asks, I decided to stretch my legs. It's been a long journey." 

"Very good, sir," says Rogers, the driver, and as Alex taps his hat onto his head, Rogers and Wilkinson the footman set about retrieving his trunk. He walks on; the carriage passes him as he's crossing the marketplace and he puts up a hand to Mrs. Wye who owns the tea shop who's walking in the direction of the haberdasher's with her youngest daughter, Ann. Ann Wye is seventeen years old, as he is, but even were he inclined toward the state of matrimony, Alex will be Viscount Estermont one day, and Baron Burleigh besides that. He's his uncle's heir. Thomas, the eldest twin by some thirty minutes, has never married; nor, Alex thinks will he ever marry. He understands the reason why.

Alex knows the town very well. He didn't grow up here; he spent the first eight years of his life in London, though he would admit if asked that he remembers very little of that time; he first went to Deepgate aged eight years, and his parents pursued his father's career in international politics from that point henceforth. He receives a letter once each month; his mother and father take turns to write half a page or so to explain their work in Flanders or India or any of a multitude of places that Alex doesn't particularly care to recall, as he can't ever recall their showing affection toward him. Again, that doesn't sadden him - he's known several boys at school whose position mirrors his own in that respect precisely. And the letters he prefers to receive come from Brookton, not from India and not from France or the Americas. They come via the post office he passes on his way past the butcher's shop and the Dog and Duck toward the bridge that leads out towards Esterbrook. 

It's a glorious day, and once he's outside the town and over the stile into the pear orchard, he takes off his hat and his coat and his gloves and he rolls up his sleeves as he walks. He knows the way almost as well as he knows his Pliny, like a good Deepgate boy, but he takes his time and doesn't hurry. He forces himself to do so, though whether that's to increase his anticipation of events to follow or to allow himself a few minutes to calm his nerves he is unsure. But then he comes to the stone bridge that crosses the Ester, by the bend that curves through the end of the Estermont estate. He pauses there, then abandons hat and coat and gloves at the foot of the wall, and he perches himself upon it. His legs dangle over the edge, heels striking stone, and he peers down into the water. It looks so still, so peaceful, but he knows it's not. 

This is the place he almost drowned last summer. This is the place his uncle Peter died, almost four decades before. 

He think it's as good a place to wait as any.

\---

He was fourteen years old the first time he came to Esterbrook. 

He remembers it well. He'd spent so many summers by then with his mother's family, the Ellinghams, in their London home or a rented house down on the south coast that the sudden change seemed quite jarring to him. He didn't precisely _like_ the Ellinghams; his mother's parents were pleasant enough, and her two brothers and their families have always been of a cheerful disposition, but they've treated him with rather more pity than he'd have preferred. Then, ahead of the usual holidays, his father had written to say that Alex was to spend his summers acquainting himself with the family estate in Derbyshire, and his uncle Thomas had agreed to the arrangement. He wouldn't go to London and the Ellinghams; he would go to Brookton, to Lord Estermont.

He travelled by coach from Plymouth to Derbyshire, reading all the way and wondering how he might like his uncle, if at all. He understood that he'd met the man more than once in his infancy but he couldn't recall him; what he knew was he had fought in the war and had scars to prove it, and he was otherwise his father's identical twin brother. Of course, he hadn't seen his father in very nearly two years by that point, and had trouble conjuring his face in his mind's eye. He could much more readily conjure his grandfather on his mother's side, or either of his mother's brothers.

At Brookton, he was ushered into a carriage and swept up to the house in so great a hurry that he barely had the time to see the town at all, even in the dying summer light. And when he stepped down from the carriage and came to the house, which frankly seemed almost as large as Deepgate was, he found the butler, Haversham, waiting at the door. He was perhaps nearing sixty years old, grey of hair and very polished of appearance, small and slight but with an air of Alex's schoolmasters that said he was not a man to be crossed. 

"We expect to serve dinner shortly, sir," Haversham told him, as he guided him up the particularly grand central staircase and off to the right down a wide, airy corridor. "Jameson will act as valet for the duration of your stay." He waved one hand and a liveried footman appeared as if from nowhere, then the butler swept open a door and gestured inside. "Your room, sir. If you would care to dress for dinner, I believe his lordship and his guests are already in the dining room." 

His uncle and his guests were indeed in the dining room. When Alex entered, he understood the meaning of Haversham's quietly arched eyebrow: they were arranged rather informally about the room, speaking what seemed to be Attic Greek amongst themselves.

"This must be your brother's boy," one of them said, in Greek. "He looks like you. Are all you blasted Estermonts a handsome lot?"

"We do tend that way, yes," another of them said, also in Greek and rather wryly, and then he turned to look at Alex who was still loitering in the doorway. Alex remembers him as tall and slim and impeccably dressed, with hair so dark it was almost black except for the grey coming in at his temples. He did look like him, he realised; Alex might have been six or seven inches shorter than him then, but that only meant he looked like him in miniature, without the grey hairs or the scar that ran down his left cheek and made him look rather handsomely roguish, like a highwayman in some tawdry gothic novel that he absolutely hadn't read. His father didn't have a scar. From what Alex recalled, his father had a much more severe style to his hair and had never seemed to enjoy company even half as much as his brother did at that moment.

Alex introduced himself in his best classroom Greek, with a stumble or two but he thought he acquitted himself quite well nonetheless. All seven men in the room seemed delighted by it, and said so, and the look on his uncle's face was a picture indeed - he'd never seen his father smile like that, not that he could remember. But, delighted as they were, they mercifully changed to English once dinner was served. All in all, he believed it was a promising start.

The six rather animated guests remained at Esterbrook for the whole first week of Alex's visit, and during their stay he didn't see his uncle alone for a single moment. He didn't mind, however; he hadn't expected to have Lord Estermont at his beck and call, and the men were a very interesting set. They each spoke a variety of different languages to varying degrees of fluency and enjoyed practicing them on one another, and discussing their various dialects and etymologies to the point of very frequent friendly argument. One seemed to specialise in the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics; Alex had read a paper or two on the subject that had crossed his grandfather's desk in London, though Sir Francis' interests had always been more in history than in language. Another two were Latinists and two had their specialisms in varieties of Greek, while the last preferred Arabic and, he understood, translated poetry. Alex felt he learned more from one week's conversation with the lot of them than he had in his six years at Deepgate. 

And then, over the second week, the guests began to leave. He remembers watching their carriages depart from the broad steps at the front of the house, in front of the sweeping lawn that led down to the fishpond, and how his uncle turned to him with a smile once they'd waved off the last of them - Professors Petrakis and Christie - on their way back to Oxford. 

"I hope that wasn't all too tedious for you," he said, and Alex shook his head. 

"Not at all," he replied. "It was fascinating, honestly. You all know so much about so many things."

His uncle laughed warmly. He had a face that seemed used to smiling, which he'd done with great frequency while his guests were there, and Alex was pleased to find it hadn't ceased with their departures. "We know substantially less than we'd like to think we do, truth be told," he said. "Don't let them fool you, Alex. Can I call you Alex?"

"I'd be pleased if you would." 

His uncle nodded. "Good, then by all means you'll call me Tom," he said. "I'm afraid I don't know very much about how to act with children and I don't suppose we've treated you much like one for the past fortnight. Would you be very put out if I continue to treat you like a man, Alex?"

"I'd be pleased if you'd do that, too," Alex said, finding he meant it as earnestly has he'd meant anything in his life before.

Tom reached out and squeezed his shoulder, and they went inside together. Tom did exactly as he'd said he would from that point on - he treated Alex like a man, like an equal, and Alex found he liked that very much indeed. As the days passed, and the weeks passed, they spent hours discussing Tom's friends' work, and Tom's own pet project, which he laughed about as he showed him the sketches he'd taken of various graffiti from around the excavations at Pompeii. Some of them were extremely lewd but Alex found them just as amusing and intriguing as his uncle seemed to. It was one thing to study Livy and another to see what the average man in the street might scrawl on a wall in anger, even if it was a prick the size of a stallion. 

They read a lot, together in the library or on couches in Tom's study. They walked a lot, too, speaking Latin or Greek or French or sometimes Spanish, though Alex didn't know very much of the latter, and what Tom knew was what he'd learned from partisans in the peninsula during the war. They walked into town, or they rode into town, they paid visits to a number of the estate's elderly tenants, spent rainy afternoons making atrocious noises at the piano and the occasional evening in Brookton, at one dance or another, or a hand of whist with the farmers at the Dog and Duck. Alex was learning quite quickly that his uncle Tom wasn't a very proper kind of viscount at all, when it came to it. Everyone seemed to like him, though, from the farmers to the publican to Mrs. Wye who served them tea and all the local society, except perhaps for Squire Bramley from the manor house on the far side of Brookton. 

"He's still annoyed that your great-great-grandfather had the gall to build Esterbrook so close to Bramley Hall," Tom told him, one night as they walked back to the house after losing three hands of faro. "Which was more than a hundred years ago so you can see the great length of memory in the local area." 

He clapped Alex jovially on the back and they walked on, taking the short cut through the fields though he supposed a proper gentleman would ride or call his carriage. Alex found that after so many years at school, however, he didn't care too much for _proper_. He cared for the country air and the stars stretched out above them, and the sound of the river that seemed to be everywhere he went.

And then, the following day, before breakfast, Alex thought he'd take a walk and stretch his legs before they settled in for some translation. He turned the corner of the stables on the way toward the river and he saw them there, to the side of the lean-to where they kept the horses' feed. Mr. Drysdale, who was Squire Bramley's land agent, was on his knees on the ground; Tom was leaning back against the wooden slats, his eyes closed, his lips parted, his long fingers in Mr. Drysdale's hair. Drysdale was sucking his uncle's cock, with surprising vim for a man kneeling on gravel. Alex's eyes widened. For a moment, and to his shame a rather long one, he watched. Then he turned and walked away, feet mercifully still on the grass so the crunch of the gravel couldn't give him away. 

He sat on the swing in the rose garden and thought about it afterwards. It wasn't that he'd never seen anything like it - he'd walked in on all kinds of things back at Deepgate, though he'd never been involved in them himself. And he supposed it was better than getting the dairy maid in the family way, like Mr. Lascelles his old teacher had. They hadn't married - her status was a bit too low for that - but they'd had a new Latin master by Michaelmas, and they'd never seen Elsie the maid again. 

Alex left for school again two days later, still thinking about it on and off on his way back down to Plymouth, as the towns and countryside rushed by the window that he stared from. It was in his head in the inns along the way, where his prick started to fill under the sheets, and he felt a stab of guilt as he recalled the scene. It had been private, of course, not meant for prying eyes, but he couldn't help but think of it.

He supposed, as he touched himself, that he found Mr. Drysdale attractive in some way. Now, of course, he knows how wrong he was. 

\---

The second time he went to Esterbrook, he was fifteen years old. A whole year had passed, and he'd been so busy for the most part that he hadn't had time to miss it, though he'd found occasionally that he missed how he'd been treated there. What had struck him most, however, was the fact that his uncle had written to him with much greater frequency and at much greater length than either of his parents had in that intervening year; he had excellent penmanship, and a witty turn of phrase, and Alex found he reread the letters often. 

When he arrived in Derbyshire, a house party was in its final throes. From what he gleaned from Jameson, once again made up to be his temporary valet, the guests had been there for nearly a month and had been due to move on some days earlier, but inclement weather had cause a river close to their destination to burst its banks and rather ruin their route. They were to remain a few extra days at the least. 

Alex recognised a few of them: Professor Christie was there with his wife, and Mr. Saxelby the Egyptologist with both wife and married daughter, whose husband was evidently a big name in the Foreign Office where Alex's father was employed and had been called away to who knew where. Christie greeted him warmly and they talked for more than an hour about his most recent paper, a copy of which Alex's uncle had sent to him at Deepgate in case it took his interest. And Tom was there, of course, but so engaged with his multitude of guests that all he could do for several days was cast an apologetic look in Alex's direction over the dining table. Alex was, of course, quite used to being far from the centre of attention: he wasn't the richest boy in school, or from the highest or oldest house, though he was liked well enough and his height relative to his peers and the class above theirs made him a popular choice when it came to sports. 

On the fourth day, however, the guests departed. As they stood there side by side on the front steps, waving off Professor Christie and his wife, Alex realised he'd expected Tom to leave with them, but instead he stretched rather hugely, gave him a smiling sideways glance and said, "You know, I thought they'd never leave."

"You didn't want them to stay?" Alex replied. 

"I'll let you in on a secret, Alex," Tom said, and he leaned down a little closer, one hand at Alex's shoulder. "Sometimes I find people utterly exhausting. Don't you?"

Alex frowned. "I could go back to Deepgate if you'd prefer," he said. "I doubt my father would either know or particularly care."

Tom laughed. He shook his head. "You're not people," he said. "This is your home. You're more welcome here than any of the rest of them." 

And the way he squeezed his shoulder, Alex truly did believe he meant that. 

They spent the following weeks much as they had the previous year: they walked, and they talked, they read in the library, stood at Tom's desk and spread out illustrations and talked through translations and Tom said, "You know, when you're older, you should come there with me. It's a wonderful, terrible place. Fascinating in a morbid kind of way. You'll have read Pliny's letter, of course..."

He had, in fact, read Pliny's letter on the eruption of Vesuvius, and they found themselves discussing the _Epistulae_ with great animation until the small hours of the morning. It was more pleasant than Alex's Latin classes had ever been.

A pair of Tom's old army acquaintances visited for a weekend in August, when the sun was so hot that all four of them sat in shirtsleeves under an awning erected in the rose garden, by the fountain. Major Reilly was a bluff Irishman of at least sixty years old with a wicked sense of humour that made Alex laugh until he thought he might never breathe normally again. And Major Carlysle sprawled on the grass with his hands tucked underneath his head like he was still in Spain in the war and not England in peacetime, and when he sat up, his blonde hair had blades of grass stuck there that Tom leaned over to pluck out for him. Alex frowned as he looked at them, at the way Tom smiled at him, at the way Tom looked at him, and the way Carlysle looked back. There was a warmth there and an intimacy that Alex himself had never experienced.

That night, in bed, he remembered the moment in perfect detail. When he touched himself underneath his sheets, he wondered what it might be like to be his charming uncle and to have men be like that with him. He'd known for some time that he had little interest in women; it had always been Mr. Lascelles that he thought of, after all, not Elsie the dairy maid. Never girls; only men. Never boys; only men. Major Carlysle was handsome, fair-haired and blue-eyed and tanned from the sun in a way that agreed with him utterly. It made sense when Alex thought of the two of them, and what they might do behind closed doors, when he closed his eyes.

Reilly and Carlysle didn't stay much more than five days before they moved on, and life returned to normal. They drank tea in Mrs. Wye's tea shop and ordered books from Vincent's bookshop, though Alex supposed that was the kind of thing that Tom could have had his valet do for him. His man was a gaunt but pleasant enough fellow of roughly fifty years of age, Scottish, by the name of McRae. He was evidently an excellent valet, though Alex hadn't much experience of them personally. He half expected to employ Jameson the footman when the time came for him to have a man of his own; thus far, he'd found nothing amiss with his conduct, though he supposed Haversham likely kept a close eye on the situation. 

And then, one morning, Alex went out to the stables a little earlier than scheduled, before they were due to ride down to Matlock and call on one of Alex's uncles on his mother's side who evidently had some vague business dealings in the area. Inside, by the far door that led out to the path to the field with the gate to the river, and the footpath back to Bramley Hall, was Tom and the squire's groundskeeper, Ben Woods. He was a good-looking man, perhaps thirty-five, strong and rough and not quite able to keep the beard from growing in at his chin, and Alex's uncle Tom was kissing him. They had their mouths together, hungrily, one of Tom's thighs between Woods' legs as he pushed him up against the wall. He could _hear_ it, the wet sounds of it, their breath, the scuff of boots on the dusty ground, the way Woods moaned as Tom palmed his cock over his trousers.

Alex left again, quickly, and came back on time to find Tom waiting there for him. They proceeded as if nothing had happened, and rode south along the river to the Matlock road from Brookton. But all the time, Alex was thinking of Woods' hands at the curve of his uncle's arse and Tom's mouth on his, so far from chaste it almost seemed worse than what he'd seen with him and Mr. Drysdale. He could feel his prick try to stiffen as they rode and he took off his coat, improper as that was, feigning lightheadedness from the heat in order to hide it. When Tom frowned, concerned, and asked if they should stop or turn back, he told him no, they should just keep going, he'd be perfectly fine in a short while. 

He wondered what it would have been like to be Tom, pressing a big, strong man like Woods against a wall. But the farther they rode, side by side on horseback, the more apparent it became: his interest was not in being in Tom's place. What he wanted was to be in Woods'. 

It was just as well, he thought at the time, that he left for school again not too long after. It would give him a chance to put that nonsense out of his mind. 

\---

He remembers the third time he visited Esterbrook. He was sixteen years old. He wasn't sure he should be going there at all, given all that he'd discovered about himself while he'd been away, but there he was again. He supposed that was the arrangement.

Major Carlysle was there when he arrived. The major remembered him, which Alex thought was kind, but he could only feign kindness in response when he discovered the brash blonde was occupying the room beside his uncle's. Alex's own room was almost as far away as it was possible to be while remaining inside the same structure, though he supposed that was a function of that room being one of the largest aside from the master bedroom itself. That didn't change the fact, however, that the thought of their proximity made his insides burn with jealousy he found utterly disgusting. 

Alex had spent the year attempting to forget the revelation he'd had on the way to Matlock, which he had to admit hadn't quite the same ring or effect as Paul on the way to Damascus. The issue had been that throwing himself into his education had had little effect on his desires; he had already been as engaged in the curriculum as it was possible for him to be. The issue had further been that throwing himself into Deepgate society had also proved rather fruitless; he had no interest in any of his classmates, or indeed in any of the older boys, not in any more than a friendly way, or at least no more than the briefest flare of attraction. He'd tried to enjoy their company, at least physically, but he'd pushed them away. What he'd had in his head was Thomas Estermont, his warm brown eyes and his smile and his familiar hands, ink-stained fingers, and the scar that twisted down over his left cheek. Seventeen-year-olds who couldn't grow a beard and longed for the ability gamble without the headmaster scolding them were not Alex's primary concern.

Carlysle, as it happened, had been there at Salamanca when Tom had had his scar. They'd been majors under the same colonel and had fought together for a number of years; Alex understood that was not a relationship with which he could compete, not the least when he was the sixteen-year-old nephew of the man he so ardently desired. So he kept himself to himself, read alone in his room or walked by the river, spent an afternoon learning to fish with the butcher's old father who didn't have a tooth left in his head, and consequently all his instructions were mimed rather than spoken. He stayed away from the pair of them, for his own sake as much as theirs.

On the fifth night, though, he couldn't sleep and so he went downstairs to find a book he thought he'd left in his uncle's study. He slipped down barefoot, in his trousers with his shirt untucked though no doubt poor Jameson would have been scandalised that he hadn't simply called him to find the book for him or else to get him properly attired. He opened the study door and it swung open onto lamplight because the room, it seemed, was not as empty as he'd expected it to be. 

Major Carlysle was bent over the desk, Tom's papers askew, some swept onto the floor, his forehead pressed to the desktop's leather inlay. His trousers had been pushed down and caught at his knees, and Alex's uncle was standing there behind him. He had his hands at Carlysle's hips. His shirt was tucked up underneath his arms and the flap of his trousers was unbuttoned and hanging, and his prick was shoved up into Carlysle's bared arse. Alex could see the faint gleam of oil on it in the lamplight, shining on his skin and on Carlysle's cheeks as he fucked him deeply. Tom's face was flushed and he raked his hair back from his forehead with one hand as he tilted back his head and stretched his faintly prickly throat. He took a breath between his parted lips, bit the bottom one as he pulled right back to the tip, and then thrust back in. 

Alex felt his cheeks burn. He felt his eyes prickle hotly with what he tried to persuade himself weren't angry, jealous tears. Then Tom's head turned, and his eyes opened, and his brow furrowed. He stopped abruptly, with his fingers still in his hair, and his cock still inside Carlysle, and a mortified look on his face. 

"Alex," he said. His voice sounded thick, full of desire that wasn't for him and horror that definitely was. Alex turned and he left and he closed the door, and he walked in a very orderly fashion back up the stairs to his room. Tom did not follow, which he told himself was just as well; when he closed the door of his own room behind him, he stripped himself naked and he stroked himself to the thought of it, to being the one in Carlysle's place, with Tom's thick prick inside him. It didn't take him very long to finish, but sleep did not come any more quickly afterwards than it had before.

In the morning, at breakfast, the two of them were alone. 

"Did the major leave?" Alex asked, as he stirred his already stirred tea. The spoon clinked distractingly against the china.

"Yes," Tom replied. "He thought it was best he get home to his wife." 

Alex nodded. He looked at his food and he grimaced. "I'm sorry," he said. "About last night. I was only looking for a book to read. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"I know. I'm afraid I rather foolishly didn't lock the door." 

Alex frowned. He put down his teaspoon and looked at Tom over the table, who looked back at him steadily.

"I don't mind, you know," Alex said.

"You don't mind what, precisely?"

"What I saw."

"And what did you see?"

"You and the major."

"Doing what?"

Alex's frown deepened. "You were fucking him," he said. "Over the desk."

"I'd ask where you learned language like that but your father and I went to Deepgate, too," Tom said, then he leaned forward slightly on his elbows. "Do you intend to tell anyone?"

"No. Never."

"I'm pleased to hear that. Though I doubt it would do you much good if you did - your father knows the kind of company I keep and my dedication to it is why you're my heir rather than a son of my own." He smiled wryly, and set to buttering some bread. "My apologies, Alex. I'll be more discreet when you're at home in future."

"You don't have to be."

"But I should be."

And that was the end of that. They talked about pears instead, of all things, and when the first batch of pear cider might be ready.

Things were awkward after that, for a day or two, before their routine returned to normal. But Alex found he started sitting closer when they talked, settling a hand on his uncles back as they bent over his illustrations, and a hundred other little things he hadn't meant to do but ultimately meant to do despite that. He knew what he was doing, and Tom did nothing to dissuade him, perhaps because he didn't notice, or perhaps because he told himself that it was nothing, or perhaps because he told himself it was just an adolescent fancy and nothing worth his note at all. It would pass. Alex thought it would, at first. As it happened, however, it did not.

"You know, the first time I came here, I saw you with Mr. Drysdale," Alex said, one afternoon at cards in the garden, when the breeze was almost but not quite enough to blow the deck away. 

Tom looked at him over the table. "Did you?" he said, as he put down a card, and it skimmed across the tabletop and fell onto the ground. 

"The second time, I saw you with Woods." 

Tom nodded, but he didn't say another word; he seemed to take it as further proof of his need for increased discretion. And Alex didn't say he wished it had been him, not them.

They were alone in the house again - as alone as a man can be in a house the size of Esterbrook, with all the staff that such an estate entails. Tom had a steward to run the estate, with all its various tenancies and farmlands and orchards, and various accountants and foremen and other employees to keep track of his affairs so that he didn't have to do so personally. All he's ever really said about the state of their fortunes is one night that year when his steward left and Alex asked if all was well. 

"We're extremely rich," Tom replied, straightforwardly. " _Extremely_. Our ancestors worked rather harder than we'll ever have to." And then he told him their mills hadn't made them money in years, and the fact they still opened their doors at all was to keep the local families in work. The war hadn't been kind to anyone, it seemed; people needed jobs, and the men who'd returned wounded needed work as much as anyone. And Thomas Estermont, as it turned out, was very nearly blind in one eye. Alex wasn't sure how he hadn't noticed it before, with all their hours of squinting side by side at his manuscripts.

"A French cavalryman struck me in the face with the guard of his sword," Tom told him, when he asked him about it one night after dinner, while they were sitting in his study. "He gave me this scar and nearly took my eye out with it." 

Alex put his hand to the scar, to Tom's face, and he traced the puckered edges of it with his fingertips. Tom went still, but he didn't stop him. 

"Do you have any others?" he asked, and Tom nodded. He unravelled the cravat from his neck and he pulled the high collar of his shirt away, he turned his head, and there was a line across the side of his neck that Alex trailed one fingertip across. It made Tom shiver visibly. 

"It was the same battle," Tom said. "The same man, in fact. He nearly had me. I almost died at Salamanca, and your father would have the estate."

"And any others?" Alex asked.

Tom rolled up one sleeve to his elbow; there was a whitish patch over the inside of one forearm and he told him, "I had the misfortune to catch the muzzle of a carronade against my arm. Let's say it was hot."

Alex trailed his fingers over the smooth white skin. "And any others?" he asked. 

Tom paused, and then he took his hand. He led it to a spot at his side, under his ribs, and pressed Alex's fingers to it over his shirt and waistcoat. "A rifle ball grazed me here," he said, still holding Alex's wrists in one hot hand. "I was extremely lucky to come back alive."

"I'm glad you did," Alex said. 

Tom smiled tightly. He nodded. In the candlelight, his brown eyes looked molten. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed and Alex could almost feel his heartbeat with Tom's fingers wrapped around his wrist, with Tom's flank under his hand, or perhaps that was just his own rapid pulse. They were so close, one to the other, and the light was low, and they were sitting ten feet from where Alex had caught him fucking his old military friend, bent over the desk where they also bent to examine sketches that he'd made.

Tom pulled away. He stood and he walked away, raking his fingers through his hair, pulling at it, and Alex understood: for a moment, he'd wondered if Tom might actually lean in and press his mouth to his. For a moment, and not even a short one, it had very much seemed like he might. 

Tom excused himself to bed and Alex didn't make a fuss about it; he said he'd stay there for a while and read, and Tom had no objections. Except, once he was alone, he didn't read. He went to the desk and he went through the drawers, not intending to intrude on his uncle's privacy but he knew the little jar of oil he'd seen must be there somewhere inside it. It was, tucked away at the back of the bottom drawer, and he pulled it out, closed the drawer, and set it on the desktop. He opened it, his hands almost shaking, his cock stiffening, his cock aching, so he unbuttoned his trousers and he tucked his shirt up underneath the lower margin of his waistcoat. He pushed his trousers down over his hips and let them gather at his knees and he dipped two fingertips into the wide mouth of the jar. He bit his lip. He reached his hand back, leaned down, shuffled his feet a little wider apart, and once he'd rested down against one shoulder so that he had the free use of both his hands, he eased his cheeks apart. He ran his oily fingertips between them, against his hole, and imagined his uncle's fingers there instead. 

He worked one finger inside, slowly, feeling his face flush hot. He'd never tried to do that before - he'd always assumed that if the time came then the time came and he wouldn't need to do it for himself, but there he was, pushing his forefinger in past his rim and up inside himself, finding his passage so tight he was unsure how a man's prick might enter. He worked the second finger in, even more slowly, his teeth bared, his breath shallow and tight. He pushed them in deep, as deep as they would go, and maybe it wasn't Tom's cock but he could imagine it as he began to fuck himself with his own fingers. 

But the door opened. The door closed. "Alex," Tom said. "I apologise, I didn't mean to interrupt." 

Alex turned his head as best he could, as his chest went tight and his balls went tight and his insides clenched, as his hole clenched. "I think I'm doing it wrong," he said. He pulled his fingers back out again, while he was sure Tom was watching, and he used both hands to part his cheeks and expose his slick hole. "I'm sorry to ask but will you show me what to do?" 

He thought he'd leave. He honestly thought he'd turn around and leave or tell him to stop being ridiculous and pull his trousers up and go to bed before he made a mess of his study. He thought he might send him away, from the room or from Esterbrook, though he wasn't sure how seriously he entertained that thought. But he watched Tom take a slow, deep breath as he leaned there with his back against the study door. Then he watched him walk across the room. 

Tom leaned past him, one hand pressed to the desktop, and Alex watched him dip his long, slim fingers into the jar of oil, just the first two but right up to the knuckles. He watched him curl them in toward his palm so the oil wouldn't drip onto the desk and stain the leather. Then he felt him rub them flatly over the rim of his hole. He felt him push there, heard his breath hiss as he breathed in through his teeth, felt him push one fingertip past his rim and then slowly press inside him.

It was different from the feel of his own hand, Alex thought, as he closed his eyes and pressed his forehead down against the desk. It was different because he could feel Tom's free hand grip his bare hip and his slick forefinger pressing into his arse the tip of it brushed past a place not so very far inside him that made his knees feel weak and his cock stiffen even harder. It was different because it was Tom, his charming uncle, his beloved uncle, who he'd tried so hard not to want. He'd failed in that respect quite completely.

It didn't take long: Alex came from the fact of it as much as the feel of it, spurting thickly over the rug beneath his feet. His hole pulled tight around Tom's fingers, fluttered, and Tom pushed in just once more, hard, before he eased them slowly back again. And when Alex turned, when his gaze went down from Tom's flushed face to between his thighs, he could see the damp patch spreading there. He'd come from it, too, without even having touched himself. He'd come from it without having done more than touch Alex.

Tom shook his head, quite clearly aghast. He wiped his oily fingers off on his already soiled trousers, and then he turned and walked away without a word. 

In the morning, he was gone. 

\---

Alex sits on the bridge in the sun, listening to the water as it runs below. It really is a wonderful day - there's just enough of a breeze in the air to take the edge off the summer heat, and the light on the river is just dappled enough through the leaves on the gently swaying trees that it's not blinding. This might be his favourite place in all the world, he thinks. Even if he were to see each and every corner of it, he'd always come back here.

He remembers that afternoon, that year, a week after Tom had left Esterbrook. He remembers it was just like this - it was a beautiful day and he was walking by the river, and the water had just looked so very inviting that he hadn't been able to resist it. It seemed so calm, like he very much wasn't himself at that point - he was full to bursting with regret because he hadn't meant to make Tom leave. Haversham said he'd gone to his club in London for a few days, urgent business of some sort, wasn't sure when he'd be back, and Alex knew that was a not terribly complicated code for _I need to be where my nephew is not_. He understood. He really did.

The river looked so inviting that he didn't resist. There was no one around - it was technically running through Estermont land at that point in its course and it wasn't very close to the public bridleway, so he didn't think too much of stripping off his coat and shirt and boots and trousers, stripping right down to his bare skin, and wading down into the water. Sometimes they swam in the lake at the bottom of the hill at Deepgate, on sunny afternoons after classes when there was no one about to tell them not to, and it didn't seem so very different to him. Of course, no one had ever drowned in the lake at Deepgate, at least not in the school's rather lengthy history. The Ester had never been so kind.

He was treading water in the middle of the river when he heard the sound of a horse coming closer, down the road that led up to the house. He saw it on the bridge, and he saw it stop, and he saw Tom was the rider - he raised one hand and Tom dismounted quickly and just as he saw the look of utter dismay on his uncle's face, that was when it happened. The current took him under. It took him down, abruptly, without much more than a second's warning, so hard and fast that he couldn't have escaped without assistance. He wasn't a strong swimmer - he could swim, but the lake hadn't had that kind of a current, and he'd never swum at sea. His grandparents hadn't permitted it, and he was beginning to understand why. If, of course, he were ever to understand anything again.

The next thing he knew, he was on the riverbank. He spluttered out a mouthful of river water, whole lungsful of river water, and coughed it up into the grass, and when he looked up, there was Tom. His hair and his clothes were soaking through and plastered to him and the look on his face was both appalling and appalled. He clutched at Alex's upper arms so hard it hurt him. He leaned down low, shaking, all the colour gone out of his face. He kissed him on the mouth, with his fingers going up into his hair, and then pulled back with a high, strained laugh. He shook his head, his wet hair shedding droplets of the river water saturating it. And Alex just stared up at him. His lungs burned but he didn't care. Tom had kissed him. Tom had _kissed_ him.

Tom stretched out on the grass beside him. The back of his fingers brushed the back of Alex's, and neither of them moved away. 

"Please don't swim in the river again," Tom said. 

"I won't," Alex replied, hoarsely. "I absolutely won't." 

They lay in the sun for a while, just like that, exhausted and drying out slowly, until Tom finally stood. He held one hand down to Alex and he took it, and he let him help him up onto his feet. He ended up quite close to him, close enough that he could see the small striations in his deep brown eyes, the beginnings of stubble at his chin, the small lines in his lips, and he could have sworn that he was going to kiss him. Again. Kiss him _again_. He would have liked him to.

"You're getting tall," Tom said instead. "You'll be taller than me in a year or two."

"Will I?" Alex replied.

"Well, your father is unsurprisingly my height. And your mother is a very tall woman."

"Is she?"

"Why do you think she married your father? He was the only man in her circle who didn't make her look like a giantess."

"It wasn't love, then?"

Tom's mouth twisted wryly. "I don't believe either of them knows how," he said. "They're a good match in that respect."

"Do you?"

Tom laughed. He shook his head and looked away, and avoided the question completely. "You should put your clothes on before you catch a cold," he told him. "I know it's summer but don't think you can't."

Alex dressed. They returned to the house. And, that night, on the couch in Tom's study, he told him about the day his older brother died. Tom and Charles had been eight years old, their last summer before Deepgate, and Peter was sixteen; the twins had gone swimming, against their sickly father's wishes, and when Tom had been pulled under, Peter had dived in after him. Peter had saved Tom's life, and lost his own in the process. 

"But you saved me," Alex said, and Tom nodded. 

"I did," he said. "There aren't words to say how pleased I am about that. But please don't make me do it again."

Alex nodded. And perhaps he thought about kissing him, perhaps he thought about touching him, squeezing his shoulder, tracing the scar over his cheek, but he understood it really wasn't the time. In the morning, though, they walked back out to the bridge. Tom leaned forward against the wall, his hands against the stonework that was already at least a century old by then; Alex stepped close and rested one hand over the top of his. When they kissed, standing there on the bridge, Tom's hands cupping his jaw, it was soft but not quite chaste. And Alex wasn't sure what, if anything, would come of it next; just a couple of days later, he was obliged to return to school and leave his uncle there alone.

That was the last time they were together at Esterbrook, but it wasn't the last time they were together. He waited until Christmas of that year, of last year, though even that seemed like something of a struggle when his life was Latin lessons and mathematics and it could have been Tom's library or the view from the parapet that ran around the roof and looked down over the town, and the bridge over the river where he'd kissed him. They wrote letters, of course, the same kind as before, but it didn't feel the same as it had then. In the last one Alex sent before term ended, he told him so; he told him how he wished for summer, and for Esterbrook, and Tom's mouth and his hands and his bare skin against his. Perhaps it was too much, but it was so very difficult to contain himself. 

He remembers going to town. The other boys went home for the holiday periods and though Alex usually stayed at school, he paid his way to town instead in the coach up from Plymouth. He knew where the family's townhouse was, of course, a rather smaller property on a pretty square in Bloomsbury though he supposed they could have afforded something that showed much more extravagance, and so that was where he went; he knew his uncle spent the winters there rather than braving the rain and snow in Derbyshire, and if he was wrong...well, he could stay the night and then return to Deepgate. 

Haversham answered the door and if he was surprised by Alex's appearance, he hid it exceptionally well. "Master Alexander," he said. "I wasn't told to expect you."

"I wasn't sure I was coming until just now, Haversham," he replied. "Is my uncle at home?"

"Lord Estermont is in his study, sir. Should I announce you?"

"I'd rather surprise him, thank you."

It was the house where he'd spent the first eight years of his life, but he couldn't remember it, or indeed where the study might be within it. Haversham discreetly directed him to the first floor, up the stairs and around to the left, and Alex followed his instructions. He went up, with his heart thumping hard in his chest, and he opened the door. 

"Now not, Haversham," Tom said. Then he turned his head toward the door and he saw him there. He frowned. "Alex," he said. "Were we expecting you?"

"No," he replied. "I know this is a surprise. Do you want me to leave?"

Tom shook his head. "No. This is as much your home as it is mine, just like Esterbrook."

"Do I have a room to sleep in, then?"

"You can sleep in any room you'd like to." 

"What if I'd like to sleep in yours?" Tom's brow furrowed. Alex smiled wistfully. "I know, I shouldn't talk like that. It's not the done thing."

"I was going to say Haversham might notice." Tom raised his chin slightly and glanced back over Alex's shoulder. "Close the door, would you." So Alex did that. And when Tom stood, the front fall of his trousers was hanging down and he held his shirt up against his abdomen with the fingers one hand, out of the way of his thick, jutting prick. Alex's eyes went wide. His insides tightened.

"I was reading your letter," Tom said. "You shouldn't trust things like that to the mail, Alex. If anyone saw..."

"You saw."

"Yes, I saw."

"Shall I lock the door?"

"You're by no means obligated."

He knew that, of course, but he locked the door despite that fact. "Should I come over there?" he asked. 

"Alex, please understand that sending me a letter like this one doesn't mean that you're beholden to its contents. I don't expect you to do this."

He went closer. He took off his jacket and he threw it over the couch that sat nearby. He unbuttoned his trousers and he pushed them down over his hips. Then he bent down over his uncle's desk, in front of the window with its gauzy lace curtain drawn against the afternoon sun. Tom didn't ask him to leave again; what he did instead was part his cheeks, lean in, and lick his hole.

He could feel Tom's hot hands against his skin. He could feel Tom's hot breath against his skin, too. He could feel him spreading his cheeks with his palms, bringing his thumbs to his rim and easing his hole open just a fraction with them. Alex's prick filled quickly, almost so quickly he felt lightheaded, and he pressed his hands to the desk to keep his balance as Tom lapped at him, as he drew the flat of his tongue over his arsehole and swirled there wetly, pressed the tip against it, then drew back just a few short inches and blew cool air against his overheated skin. Alex shivered from it. Tom leaned back in just long enough to press an almost teasing kiss to his rim and then he stood himself up behind him. Alex, for his part, as his uncle rummaged in the desk drawers, wasn't entirely sure how he hadn't finished then and there. He'd never felt anything like it.

There was oil in the desk. Of course there was oil in the desk, and Tom drew out the stopper and then dipped his fingers into it just as he'd done that night at Esterbrook. He let it drip toward his palm as he stood there, his hand deliberately in Alex's view, and said, "You're perfectly at liberty to ask me to stop now, Alex. Or at any time you choose. I won't think less of you, as I hope you don't think less of me."

Alex turned just far enough to eye him over one shoulder and he thought he might say something witty, or pithy, or perhaps just filthy, but instead he took Tom's wrist in his hand. As his pulse quickened, he brought Tom's hand down behind him. He leaned down, he spread his legs, he eased his cheeks apart with his free hand, and he introduced his uncle's oily fingers to the place where his tongue had so recently been. He could only hope that answered what had not quite been a question, and evidently it did.

Tom rubbed him there, slowly, his fingers circling his rim for a moment before he returned them to the oil for more. He stroked him there, lightly, two fingertips against him, before he pressed with a little more purpose. Without the prior stretch of his own fingers having been inside himself, Alex's hole felt even tighter when Tom began to push his forefinger inside. It felt impossibly tight but also wonderful, knowing that Tom's entire not inconsiderable attention was focused there on that intimate part of him, on the place where he hoped he'd soon enter him. It felt impossibly tight but his finger did press inside, and he felt himself stretching to accommodate its size until not only was it comfortably but also deeply pleasurable. Tom pulled back and then pushed in with two fingers instead, and Alex felt that process repeating itself; he stretched, he relaxed, and the tightness of it became the very thing he sought.

That was just as well, he supposed, because then Tom drew back and stood. He poured some of the oil into his palm and Alex could hear it as he slicked himself with it, hand against cock behind his back. Then he felt the tip of him, huge and broad and blunt, resting there against his hole. It didn't seem possible that he could take the size of him, his length and girth, though he wanted to, with all his heart he wanted to - when Tom eased himself against him, when he pushed, when he kept himself right there against Alex's aching rim with his slick fingers, Alex felt himself begin to give. He felt Tom's prick begin to enter. He felt Tom's prick begin to open him as he pushed it inside, filling him, spearing him, penetrating him almost to the core. 

Tom took a slow, unsteady breath and held Alex at his waist, underneath his waistcoat. He rolled his hips and Alex moaned against the desk. He rolled his hips for a second time and Alex felt his own cock twitch. He rolled his hips for a third time and Alex bit his lip as he braced himself and pushed back to meet him. It pushed him deeper. He'd have liked him even deeper still.

Tom held him there, bare hands against his waist, as he fucked him slowly. He could hear Tom's breath, and he could feel his cock inside him, he could feel the way it made his balls pull tight and his cockhead throb and despite everything the other boys had said about sex, about buggery, about sodomy, his uncle's cock stretching his tight hole wide open was everything he'd wanted it to be. He'd tried to do it to himself, with his fingers, but it had seemed like such a poor facsimile that he'd given up quite quickly; now he couldn't imagine ever doing that again, not when he knew what this was like. His head swam and he clenched around him, a small experiment that made Tom groan out loud and made Alex's cock feel moist at the tip. Then Tom reached forward, reached down, and slipped one hand to Alex's balls. He squeezed there, slowly, then two fingertips eased back behind and as he fucked him, he rubbed there, made him tingle, made his knees feel weak and his breath hitch roughly. He came, jerking oddly, not entirely of his own accord, pulling even tighter around Alex's cock, spilling himself all over the floor. And Tom thrust into him once, more, twice, five times, six, then finished still inside him. 

They paused there after, their breathing loud, Tom's hands at Alex's hips to keep them both steady in the aftermath of what they'd done. Tom was still in him, still hard and still deep, and Alex couldn't keep his hole from clenching tight around him, relaxing, clenching, as his body worked its way through the remnants of his orgasm. Tom stroked his rim with his thumb as he stood there, the motion oddly fond and entirely intimate, so intimate that Alex couldn't keep from blushing though he couldn't say he wanted it to stop. But then Tom pulled back, and pulled out, and for a moment all Alex could feel was the lack of him before he slipped his fingers back inside. Alex found himself humming, low and contented, as he arched his back to take Tom's fingers deeper. He found himself enjoying the way it felt when Tom's come began to leak from him, over his perineum and down toward his balls, and Tom ran his fingers through it as he settled back down on his chair.

"This was probably a mistake," Tom said, but he was stroking Alex's hole that was still slick with oil and his own come. 

"Probably," Alex agreed, but he didn't sound like he meant it. Very likely because he didn't.

He half expected him to leave after that, to go back to Esterbrook or maybe just to his club, or at least to leave the room, or else to ask him to. He didn't. For the next forty minutes, Tom touched him. He fingered his hole and he had him turn around and when Alex inevitably began to stiffen again, he watched his uncle Tom take his prick into his mouth. He licked him, sucked him, let Alex run his fingers into his thick hair and guide him just the way he wanted him. He let him come in his mouth while his fingers were inside him. And then, when Tom's erection made its eventual reappearance, Alex just watched as he stroked himself, as his chest heaved, as his eyes moved over him. He was doing that for him, because of him. It took his breath away.

He half expected him to leave, or make him leave, but he didn't. They cleaned themselves up and then sat together there, had tea, talked, smiled, and Alex felt a warmth in his chest he wasn't quite sure how to quantify. And, when he slipped into Tom's room that night, he didn't ask him to leave then, either. Maybe all Tom had the energy to do was kiss him, be he didn't mind that at all.

They had four days together, alone in the house while it rained outside. And then, on the fifth day, the front door opened and in swept Alex's parents, unexpectedly, just back from who knew where. 

"Alex?" said his mother. She frowned at him as they looked at each other in the hallway, as Tom came down the stairs behind him. He was right; she was a tall woman, but he found he barely remembered her at all. Then Charles Estermont strode in through the door and, once his rain-damp coat and hat were off, once he was standing side by side with his very slightly elder brother, the differences were as obvious as the similarities were. They were both tall men of a similar type, though Charles was more refined; his hair was shorter and substantially greyer where Tom's curled down against his forehead and was still very nearly black, except when seen in direct sunlight. He was a little thicker at the middle where Tom was very slim, and his gait was more that of an aristocrat than a former army man, and Tom of course was the other way around. Charles seemed more like the older twin than the younger one. And when he looked at Alex, and he didn't smile. He said, "Son. This is a surprise." In the eight days that followed, he said very little more than that; he was very frequently out, visiting the Foreign Office or some dignitary or other.

"Does it bother you?" Tom asked, just before dinner that first night, as they were standing on the landing by his study door. 

"Does what bother me?"

"That we look alike."

Alex shook his head. "Not at all," he said.

Tom's brow furrowed. "Then is that what you like about it?" 

"That you look like my father?"

"Yes."

"No. It's not that."

"Good." His mouth twisted wryly. "Because I seem to have fallen rather desperately in love with my seventeen-year-old nephew, which even by my standards is remarkably low. If what you actually wanted was to fuck your magnificently absent father..."

Alex nudged his hip to make him stop. "You love me?" he asked. 

Tom caught Alex's fingertips against his own, just the pads of them, out of sight, but the gesture struck him as remarkably intimate. "After all of this, and after the summer, was there any doubt?" he said. 

Alex supposed there wasn't. At least not for himself, and apparently not for Tom, either. 

\---

Now, on the bridge, he hears footsteps approaching. He turns, he brings his feet onto the ground instead of swinging in the air, and Tom approaches. He smiles his familiar, charming smile.

"I thought you might have got lost somewhere," he says. "I came to find you. I wouldn't be surprised if there's wolves in the woods, you know." But they both know there's no such thing. They both smile. They know why he's here.

"Oh, I think I can find my way," Alex replies. "I've been here before, you know."

Tom helps him up, one fine hand around his own. And once he's upright, they stand close; he's not quite as tall as Tom is, but he's just an inch or two shorter now. He'll probably never quite catch up, despite his lofty parentage, but that doesn't seem to matter very much when Tom steps in and rests his forehead lightly against his. He's missed this. He's missed this place, and he's missed him most of all.

He expects to go up to Oxford in the autumn, now he's finished his time at Deepgate; he'll go to the college where his father and his uncle studied, and their father, and their father's father. Tom still has friends there, like Christie and Petrakis and half a dozen more. Alex hopes he'll visit often. Maybe he'll ask him to, he thinks, but not now. For a short while, they don't need to speak at all.

Tom's mouth finds his, warmly, softly, as he takes his hands. They part after a moment, with a smile they share almost literally because, over the years, he really has grown so very much more like him. They're more alike than Alex will ever be to his father; that should perhaps be disconcerting, but he doesn't find it so. 

Tom kisses him. And then they turn away from the river. 

When they walk on toward Esterbrook, shoulder to shoulder, hand brushing hand, it feels very much like going home.


End file.
